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MY YOUNG COUNTRYWOMEN

THIS BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIVES OF TWO OF THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS EXEMPLARS OF TRUE WOMANHOOD

Is Medicated

BY THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION.

So quiet, so unostentatious, so eminently domestic were the lives of the mother and the wife of George Washington that the biographer and the historian have rarely mentioned theirs as distinct from their relations as mother and wife of that illustrious man. For a faithful portraiture of the character and deeds of either of these notable women, the sum of trustworthy materials to be found in memoirs, annals, or records, is very meagre. And yet the lives of these two women were indissolubly associated with the earthly destiny of one of the grandest characters in the world's history: one as his maternal guide in his childhood and youth, and the other as his conjugal companion and counsellor in his manhood and exalted career.

From 1848 until late in 1860, I was a frequent visitor at Arlington House, in Virginia, the pleasant seat of the late George Washington Parke Custis. It is situated upon high ground on the right bank of the Potomac River, overlooking the cities of Washington and Georgetown. Mr. Custis was a grandson of Martha Washington, and one of the two foster-children of her husband. He died in 1857, leaving his estate to his only child, Mrs. Mary Custis Lee, the wife. of Col. Robert E. Lee, U. S. Army, who became the com

mander-in-chief of the Confederate military forces late in the Civil War of 1861-65. I continued my visits at Arlington House until a short time before the family abandoned it and joined General Lee at Richmond in the spring of 1861.

Arlington House was filled with treasures — precious mementos of the distinguished family at Mount Vernon. Furniture, plate, porcelain, pictures, account - books, and manuscripts of various kinds-relics of the Washington and Custis families were there in abundance, and were placed at my disposal for inspection, research, and use.

Mr. Custis was eighteen years of age when Washington died, and twenty years old when his grandmother left the earth. His recollections of Washington and his wife, of his own personal experiences at Mount Vernon, and of his acquaintances and associates there, were very vivid. During many long conversations with Mr. Custis, of which I made brief notes to assist memory, I obtained a large amount of information, especially concerning his grandmother and her family. He had no clear remembrance of Washington's mother, for he was only five years of age when she died.

When, in 1859, Mrs. Lee placed in my hands, to arrange and annotate for the press, the communications of her father to the National Intelligencer for more than twenty years, under the title of "Recollections of Washington," a large quantity of autograph letters and documents pertaining to the Washington and Custis families were put into

my possession. From these papers, and from others at Arlington House, from bits of trustworthy information picked up here and there, sometimes by accident but more frequently by research during the past thirty-five years, I gathered much knowledge concerning the mother and the wife of Washington, which has hitherto been unrevealed to the public. The threads of knowledge thus gathered form the fabric of this volume, literary and artistic.

In delineating the career of Martha Washington I have mingled sketches of events in the private and public life of her husband in which she was directly or indirectly a participant-such as amusements, fêtes, military reviews, receptions, entertainments, hospitalities at Mount Vernon, and, notably, the life at various head-quarters of the army during the war for independence, at which they resided together.

So with the illustrations. Among these may be found pictures of head-quarters at which Mrs. Washington tarried with her husband after the close of each campaign; also of the two churches at which they worshipped together a greater part of their lives during forty years, and the Presidential mansions in New York and Philadelphia. In the delineation of other objects and events, care has been exercised for securing accuracy in form and costume, and for conforming to historical truth.

The engravings which illustrate the contents of this volume are fac-similes of pen-and-ink sketches made expressly for this work.

THE RIDGE, 1886.

BENSON J. LOSSING..